


Chickens Always Come Home to Roost (But Sometimes A Detour Is Necessary)

by youshallnotfinditso



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Kidfic, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 15:07:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30057318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youshallnotfinditso/pseuds/youshallnotfinditso
Summary: All in all, it had been a typical Sunday for Cameron Winklevoss. There was yardwork to be done, walks to be taken, and the whole outdoors to enjoy.And then Divya Narendra's daughter called.
Relationships: Divya Narendra/Cameron Winklevoss, KC/Divya Narendra, Tyler Winklevoss/Original Female Character
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12
Collections: The Prompt Network





	Chickens Always Come Home to Roost (But Sometimes A Detour Is Necessary)

**Author's Note:**

> My (late!) submission to TPN for round three, using both housework and the new guy as inspo

Sundays were yardwork days. Especially a day like this, with the sun high the cloudless sky and the bird and cicadas chorusing as if in competition with one another. It was hot enough that Cameron let Taffy roam off the leash, the air too humid to make a mad dash at all worth it. When she was satisfied with roaming around the yard, she settled in the coolness of the patio, tongue lolling as she watched Cameron stake peonies.

It was, all in all, a typical Sunday until Cameron’s watch buzzed with an incoming phone call.

His usual Sunday phone call with Tyler and the girls should have come much later, but Cameron still didn’t think anything of it yet, yanking his glove off and brushing a thumb over the watch face unthinkingly when an unfamiliar — and _startlingly_ young — voice cut through over his headphones.

“Is this Cameron Winklevoss?”

“Yes, speaking, who is this?”

“Giana? Um, Giana Narendra, like Divya Naren— oh! And we were at I think your house once? For New Years’ Eve? And this isn’t an emergency but I kind of. Um. Need help.”

Cameron had, at this point, begun shedding gardening gear in bits and pieces, cursing himself for leaving his phone on the kitchen table. “Giana, yes, I remember,” he said, aiming for calm, aiming for friendly. 

He snapped his fingers twice and pointed to his feet, and Taffy gave a long-suffering huff before getting up and following him inside.

“What can I help you with?” Cam asked as he lunged for his phone, fired off a text to Divya that said _Your daughter is on the phone with me?_

Divya’s response was near instantaneous: 

_Tell her to call me_

_Immediately_

“Are you at home? Could you … ” there was a steadying intake of breath, the kind Cameron knew from having four nieces meant tears were imminent, “Could you pick me up from Westchester airport?”

“I can, but can I ask you something?”

“Hang on, my dad’s calling me,” she said, and Cameron expected her to hang up the phone, but there was a brief shuffling before she said, “Okay, sorry. Yeah?”

“Did you just hang up on him?” Cameron asked, incredulous. 

“I’ll talk to him later. What?”

“I was going to ask if your parents knew you were at the airport, but something’s telling me they don’t.” There was a guilty silence. “Do they?”

Taffy followed Cameron to the garage eagerly, and Cam weighed the minutes to spare it would take to get her back into the house against her will against all three seconds it would take to clip her into the backseat like they were going on a hike. 

His former best friend’s thirteen year old daughter was alone at the airport. He didn’t have minutes to spare.

“I would’ve called them by now if my flight hadn’t been diverted,” Giana said, a sob in her voice. “I know how to get to my grandparents’ from JFK, but I’ve never been here before and when I asked someone for help she started asking all these questions and I didn’t fly with the Unaccompanied Minors Program because you don’t have to do that if you’re older than twelve but I didn’t have my parents’ permission and I didn’t want them to get the security guard,” she started crying in earnest now, “and when I searched my location in Emergency Phone Book you were the only person less than an hour away.”

“I will be there in fifteen minutes,” Cam promised. “Now just do two things for me, okay? I need you to stop crying and sit up straight. And you need to call your dad.”

“He’s gonna be so mad at me,” she wailed.

“He will be, but you can tell him you know he skipped class for a week in high school to go to a music festival.”

“He _what?!_ ”

“I don’t actually know more about it than that,” Cameron said truthfully. Divya had probably told him more details back in college, but that was all so long ago. “If you want to know more, you have to call him back.”

“Fine,” she said. “But you’ll get here in fifteen minutes?”

“Thirteen, at this point.”

“Okay. I’m gonna hang up now,” she said, and did so as Cameron pushed the limits of speeding on a church-going Greenwich Sunday to their conceivable limit. 

Giana saw Cameron before he saw her, pointing at him melodramatically with the hand not holding a phone to her ear. When he made eye contact with her, she flipped her hand into a thumb’s up, her arm still extended all the way in front of her. 

“Mom wants to talk to you,” she said when he approached, holding a pink and black smartphone out to him.

“Cam, thank _god_ ,” KC said breathlessly in his ear. The urgency of this conversation left little time to dwell on nostalgia, on any of the memories that voice reawakened. “I don’t know what’s gotten _into_ her, I’ve been out of my mind for the last hour.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” Cameron reassured.

“Still, I’m so sorry to have cut into your weekend like this, I’m sure you were busy.”

“Oh no no, I was just gardening. Honestly, I was happy for the interruption,” Cam said like he was a little embarrassed himself, though by now he was more than resigned to the solitary life he led. “Actually, do you know what this reminds me of?”

KC was quiet for a moment. It occurred to Cam that she might think this was a rhetorical question before she burst out with, “Oh holy shit, Takumi’s cat, right? What the hell was his name, like Rambo or something? Maverick?”

“I think Rocky?” Cam offered, though he was certain that was correct. He could remember parts of that weekend so vividly they were like an old favorite song, the all-night vigils from the weekend Divya had accidentally let his roommate’s cat escape when he was supposed to be watching him.

“You were really the calm in the storm then too, huh,” KC said, “Because your brother and I kept plotting to go to the animal shelter and try to find one that looked the closest to him. But you didn’t give up.”

“Only because I had that expression completely mixed up,” Cam laughed, and it wasn’t modesty at all this time, it was entirely true. He’d kept insisting “Cats always come back home, isn’t there that saying? Cats always come back? We just have to keep waiting, I’m sure he’ll turn up. They always come back,” with exhausted dread as he watched the hours creep away before he and Tyler would have to leave for crew.

“Oh my god, that’s _right_ , you kept saying ‘cats always come back’ and it was,” KC dissolved into the kind of delirious laughter that only came after a sharp relief, “It was something like _three in the morning_ , just, _insanely_ late when Divya was like “Wait a goddamn minute, are you thinking of CHICKENS ALWAYS COME HOME TO ROOST?” and kicked his beer bottle off the deck.” 

“But you know what, he did end up coming back,” Cam said warmly, his heart practically aglow with the memory. “And we’ll get Giana back home safe too, I promise.”

“I mean it, Cam, we can’t thank you enough.”

“You don’t have to, you don’t have to thank me at all.”

“I know, but I insist. Now can you put Gigi back on?”

Giana followed Cam to the car with her shoulders up near her ears, wrapping up the phone call with sullen, one-word answers. 

“I’m supposed to tell you my dad’s gonna be at your house in four hours,” was all she said when she hung up.

“Does he need my address?”

Giana held up her phone screen, showing him a contact profile with a photo of himself from six or seven years ago. “We have you in our phone book. Remember? I said, earlier.”

“You did,” Cam agreed. “You had this whole thing planned out pretty well.”

“You don’t even know that,” Giana huffed, and then stopped, tilting her head in a way that reminded Cam starkly of KC. “Wait, no. I mean, I kind of did. But I messed it up at the end.”

“How was it supposed to go?” Cam asked, because if there was anything Tyler’s girls loved, it was explaining something they’d put a lot of thought into to any adult who showed the slightest bit of interest.

“I was just trying to fly to New York, okay? We do it all the time because it’s where my grandparents live. And I’m not scared of flying, I just listen to music. Malik is scared of flying and everybody thinks I’m still a baby just because he is, but I’m _not_. My best friend Ava’s thirteen, just like me, and she flew by herself before.”

“How old is Malik now? He’s still pretty young, right?” Cam asked, because his most recent memory of Divya and KC’s son _had_ been when he was actually a baby.

“He’s seven. And he cries about _everything_ ,” Giana said with the confidence of someone who had not just been sobbing over the phone ten minutes earlier. “But we still always have to do stuff together so I never get to do anything fun.”

“It’s always hard when there’s just the two of you,” Cameron said sympathetically, through full awareness that _he’d_ been the stick-in-the-mud sibling when he and Tyler were growing up.

“I think he just needs extra attention. And if Dad would _let me_ go to Europe with Ava’s family this summer he’d get all the attention he wants. Am I _wrong?_ ”

“I think I can see where this is headed,” Cam said.

“I just wanted him to see that I can take care of myself! I was just going to go to my grandparents’ for spring break, I wasn’t going to a _concert_ or anything. I just wanted to show everyone I can do something on my own. Like, I’m responsible. And I packed and called a car by myself and everything.”

“You did,” Cam agreed. “But your grandparents didn’t know you were coming? What would you have done if they weren’t home?”

“They’re always home on Sunday, I planned this _out_ ,” Giana said through gritted teeth.

She didn’t talk more about her plan during the rest of the walk to the car, and didn’t bring anything new up either. But when they got to the car, Taffy broke the ice better than Cam ever could anyway. 

“Is this your dog!?” Giana exclaimed, reaching through the cracked window to let Taffy sniff her hand.

“That’s my girl,” Cam said, pleased, as he threw Giana’s carry-on into the trunk of the hatchback. “You can sit in the back with her if you want.”

“No, I want shotgun,” Giana said. “But what’s her name?”

“Taffy. Like Taffeta.”

“Not like the candy?”

“It could be like the candy too.”

“Ugh,” Giana said. “You’re so agreeable.”

“Sorry,” Cam said, and Giana laughed. 

“Weren’t you friends with my _dad?_ Did he tell you, like, all the time not to be such a pushover?”

Cam snorted. “I think you’re picking up well enough where he left off, as a matter of fact.”

“So he _did_ ,” she said, delighted.

“He had a lot of good advice,” Cam said, and when Giana cracked up laughing, he added, “And some that I didn’t listen to.”

“I don’t listen to it all either,” Giana said, shrugging. 

Cam deigned not to respond to that. “Do you want to plug your phone in? You can pick out the music,” he offered.

“Yeah! There’s a new Tish Tracy album, my mom didn’t let me listen to Tish Tracy until New Year’s at your house. Do you remember we kept picking her songs in that dancing game?”

“It seems like that was a monumental night for you,” Cameron said, though most of what he could remember from the New Years’ Eve when he, Tyler, and the Narendras had gotten their families together was Tyler pulling him aside afterward, murmuring a grim ‘You’ve gotta tell me to get my act together if my marriage ever gets that lifeless,’ and how hopelessly juvenile Cam had felt for having no idea what that even meant. 

More pleasantly it also reminded Cameron of the stage when Tyler and Edith had to rely overmuch on video games to keep the kids entertained, because their oldest had entered her competitive phase and kept making up rules to sports and board games that would skew things in her favor.

“ _Monumental_ ,” Giana mimicked. “Ooh, does Jennifer still listen to Tish Tracy? Wait, so are you Jennifer’s dad?”

“Jetty’s my niece,” Cameron said.

“Damn, so she’s not at your house? Just me and you and the dog then.”

“And your dad, in four hours,” Cam reminded her. “Do your parents let you curse?” 

Giana gave him a sideways glance, like he was excruciatingly lame. She looked so much like Divya he couldn’t help but grin. “Mom says not until I get a college acceptance letter. But dad lets me have two a month. He said if you swear all the time, people don’t take it seriously when you do. So you have to space them out.”

Cam laughed out loud at that. “He must have figured that out after college.”

Giana was quiet for a bit as Cam drove, staring out the window. 

Just when he had the thought to ask if she wanted to stop somewhere to eat, she turned to look at him, solemn as a judge.

“When you knew my parents in college, did you think they’d get divorced?”

“Ohhh, hon,” he said gently, forgetting for a second that this wasn’t one of his nieces, this was someone new. 

“I’m not messed up about it or anything,” she said irritably. “You can just say yes or no.”

“That wouldn’t have been a very nice thing for me to wonder about two of my friends,” Cameron said, not eager to dredge up how fervently he’d hoped they’d break up. How much he’d dreaded the idea of them getting engaged after graduation, how guilty he’d felt for feeling that way. It hadn’t been KC’s fault he’d been in love with her boyfriend. It hadn’t been Divya’s fault that he let his impulsive heart get in the way of being a good friend. 

“That’s not no,” Giana sing-songed under her breath, pulling out her phone like she was pulling a divider down to bring the conversation to a close.

“It’s not yes either,” Cam insisted, and left it at that.

“Is this _you?_ At a Fishbowl Foxes concert?” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Cam could see Giana holding her phone up. 

“I can’t look at that right now, I’m driving,” Cam admonished lightly. “But if you’re looking at Jetty’s pictures, I’m sure that’s her dad.” 

“And you guys are twins, right? That. Is. So. Freaky.” 

Cam laughed. There was something refreshing about this type of unfiltered reaction, and he and Tyler had loved it about Divya as well, way back when. The way he hadn’t even attempted to rein himself in and come up with an original (and still inevitably overdone) quip they’d have to politely grimace their way through. 

“Your dad thought so too, when we were in school,” Cam said carefully, testing. “We were halfway through sophomore year before he could tell us apart.” 

Giana gave a quiet little scoff. “That’s nothing. He didn’t even notice when I got my braces off.” 

If Tyler’s gripes about the cost of orthodontia were anything to go by, it seemed more than likely Divya just hadn’t thought to comment on it, but that was neither here nor there. 

“That’s very exciting though,” Cam placated. “I’m sure you were happy to get to eat popcorn again.”

“I guess,” Giana muttered, turning back to her phone. 

“Did you guys ever switch places and trick people?” she asked, reexamining the picture of Tyler, comparing it with Cam next to her.

“Sometimes when we were little,” he admitted. “Only once when we got older, but that didn’t go so well.”

“What happened?” She asked eagerly. 

“I didn’t ask Tyler’s permission to pretend to be him, and he got mad at me.”

“Don’t tell me the end, tell me the _story._ ”

“Okay, but it’s embarrassing and doesn’t make me look very good,” Cam said, though he’d have told her anyway. It would probably make her feel better to think she’d argued her way into something special. “Do you know what egging someone’s house is?”

“Duh,” she laughed. 

“Have _you_ done it?”

“What, are you gonna tell my dad?”

Cam raised an eyebrow at her.

“I haven’t egged someone’s _house_ ,” she said. “Me and Ava did some of the windows at school once. It wasn’t even there in the morning when we got to school, it was _nothing._ ”

Cam was beginning to get an impression of why Giana wasn’t allowed to go on vacation with Ava’s family. 

“Well, my brother egged a girl’s house after she stood him up on a date.”

“Well maybe she stood him up because he eggs people’s houses, dang,” Giana said righteously. 

“You may have a point there.”

“So what, did you go on a date with her after that?”

“That is _not_ what I did,” Cam laughed. “I pretended to be Tyler and went to their house and apologized.”

Giana squinted at him. “And he got _mad?_ ”

“There were some factors to it. He was mad because my apologizing meant that everyone knew for sure he’d done it. And because I wasn’t apologizing because I was sorry. I wanted to apply for a summer job at her dad’s company, and I didn’t want him to overlook my application because of my brother. I did end up getting the job, though.”

“Was he okay with it then?” Giana asked suspiciously.

“Not even a little bit,” Cam said ruefully. “Tyler didn’t speak to me for a month after that. And he didn’t want to be college roommates even though we’d been planning to before then. That was actually how I met your dad — he and I were freshman year roommates since my brother and I didn’t room together.”

“And then I bet he was like ‘Wow, you care about jobs more than your family too, let’s be _best friends,_ ’” Giana said, heartbreakingly caustic for someone so young.

“Giana,” Cam sighed, not certain of the protocol, here but not wanting to leave it unacknowledged when she kept coming back this again and again. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“That _was_ me talking about it,” she said with practiced apathy. “I’m allowed to joke about it, okay, it’s just my life. But I’m not gonna, like, cry about it. It’s been four years, I’m super over it and I’m not a baby anymore like Malik.”

“Does Malik cry about it a lot?” Cam asked, because Jetty sometimes blamed her own feelings on Harper or Delaney as a way to get sympathy without acting like she needed it — though that didn’t particularly seem like Giana’s style. 

“He cries about _everything_. That’s why he still has a therapist and not me. He has, like, separation anxiety from Mom and Dad getting divorced when he was three. It totally cracked his brain open like an egg.”

“That is a very vivid metaphor,” Cam said, trying not to laugh. 

“Thanks, I thought of it because we were talking about eggs. _Ooh_ could we get _fast food?_ ”

“That could probably be arranged,” Cam said.

“HA, I knew you’d say yes, because you’re so agreeable.”

“What if I just kept driving home, just because you said that,” Cam teased.

“You’re not going to,” Giana said, squinting suspiciously. 

“You’re probably right,” Cam agreed, and pulled off along the main road to let her pick a drive-thru.

Giana continued to test the bounds of Cam’s agreeableness, finding something he’d put his foot down about first (completing her plan by taking her to her grandparents’ before her dad could show up at Cam’s house), something he’d have to see and get back to her about (making summer plans with Jetty, who she’d apparently been catching up with non-stop ever since finding her on Instagram), and something he _could_ say yes to in the moment (detouring to a beach instead of going straight home, since “All the beaches in Chicago suck,” apparently).

“What does she have, is that a helmet?” Giana asked when Taffy came running back after a few rounds of fetch with a piece of driftwood, holding something broad and white in her teeth.

“Let’s hope it isn’t garbage,” Cam sighed, though moments later he’d wish they could be so lucky.

“IS THAT A GIANT CRAB?” Giana shrieked as Taffy bounded toward them with her prize.

“I think it’s at least dead?” Cam offered apologetically. “Taffy _drop it,_ ” he commanded, as if that had ever worked. 

Giana alternated between cowering and taking pictures on her phone as Cam tried to prise a rotting crustacean from the jaws of man’s best friend.

“Wait, this reminds me of a joke!” 

“What’s the joke?” Cam asked from where he was grappling with his dog on the ground, relieved that she at least didn’t seem too traumatized.

“What’s the happiest animal with five limbs?”

“Not this crab, I would imagine.”

“Ha ha. No. It’s a wolf with an— Wait, let me go back. A _wolf_ that found an _arm!_ ”

“We better hope she doesn’t find an arm,” Cam grunted, because jesus, it should not have been this difficult to get an animal 150 pounds smaller than him to let go of something.

“I have another joke,” Giana declared. 

“Shoot,” Cam said.

“Pretend you’re a lady named Mrs. Thorne. And you have a baby. What are you _not_ going to name your baby, Mrs. Thorne?”

Cam had a sinking feeling this was a not-so-hypothetical exercise. “I don’t know, Giana, what did she name her baby?”

“PIERCE!” Giana called out to the ocean, flinging her arms out dramatically for emphasis. “Pierce Thorne, isn’t that the worst name you’ve ever heard?”

“Is that someone you go to school with?”

“That’s my stepdad’s name.”

“ _Giana!_ ” Cam admonished, but couldn’t help the wave of helpless laughter that came over him. God, Divya must have been thrilled. Nobody cherished a petty grievance like Divya. 

“See, it’s funny! It’s funny, you’re laughing.”

“I’m sure it gave him a good sense of humor.”

“No, all his jokes are so dumb.”

“I guess he’s trying, at least,”

“Trying is fine but results are better,” she said, and then cocked her head and looked at Cam, still trying to wrestle his dog for a dead crab. 

“Wait,” she said, and grabbed the piece of driftwood. “Taffy, do you want it? Ooooh do you want it?” 

Giana threw it as hard as she could, and Taffy took off running, dragging the dead crab with her. 

“She has to drop it to pick it up, right? Look, she’s coming back — _she has the stick, she dropped it!_ ”

“Oh, well _done_ , Giana,” Cam said, clapping her on the back.

“We have to make sure she doesn’t find it again!” Giana shrieked with the delighted urgency everything seemed to take on for thirteen-year-olds. “Run, run!”

They took off running the opposite direction, Giana laughing unabashedly even when she stumbled in the sand and fell right on her face.

“I’m all muddy now,” she said after she’d rolled over and flung an arm across her face. “Can I just run in the water even though it’ll get my jeans dirty?”

Cam couldn’t bring himself to care about how dirty his car interior would be by the end of the day. What the hell, he’d get it serviced.

“Sure, sure, go wade,” he agreed, even though she made a face that said she was laughing at him for agreeing with her. “You still have two hours before your dad gets here, go have fun.”

Giana handed her phone off to Cam, surprised him by giving him a hug, and took off for the ocean. Taffy ran after her, barking joyfully, and Cam couldn’t imagine a better Sunday for the life of him.

“So that’s Jetty,” Giana said, towel draped around her shoulders like a shawl, staring up at Cam’s mantleplace photos of his nieces, “And what are the other three’s names?”

“Harper’s the second oldest, she’s eight, Delaney’s seven like your brother, and Cammie’s four.”

Giana turned back to look at him. “Cammie, like, short for Cameron?”

“It sure is,” he said, casually, though it was still something that could bring him to the verge of tears if he let himself think about it too hard. 

When Tyler and Edith had announced they were expecting their fourth, Cam had tried with everything he had not to show Tyler how far away it made him feel, how irreconcilably different he feared their lives had become. He’d thought he’d done a good enough job of hiding it, but Tyler must have known all along. Tyler didn’t ask Cam for permission, aware that Cam would have said no, and Cam was grateful for that, because it meant the revelation had come as a gift and nothing more. A sign that he was always welcome. A bridge into a life he’d always worried he was drifting away from.

“That’s kind of a lot of pressure,” Giana said, tilting her head and then turning back to the picture. “Like, what if she grows up and you hate each other? You’re still stuck with the same name.”

“I don’t think I could hate any of my nieces,” Cam said firmly, not entertaining the thought.

“Well, what if she grows up to be a serial killer? Or she gets really mean? Or just like, annoying, like what if she’s always wasting your time?” Giana asked, her voice getting smaller.

“What do you think I have to do with my time that’s more important than spending it with people I love?” Cameron asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice wobbling. “Important things.”

The doorbell rang three times in rapid succession. 

“Oh my god,” Giana said, covering her mouth with her hand.

“I think he’ll calm down once he sees that you’re safe,” Cam promised.

“Whatever, I don’t even care,” Giana said, her hand dropping to her side.

“Okay, then let’s get the door.”

Divya burst inside like a cyclone the second Cam had unlatched the chain, nearly smashing the door into his face.

“ _Gia_ , jesus christ, don’t _ever_ do that to me again,” Divya exclaimed, pulling her into his arms.

“You’re crushing my arm! You _always do that,_ ” Giana said, voice breaking as she pulled out of his embrace. 

Divya’s eyes met Cam’s for one terrified, insecure second, and then Giana sobbed and threw her arms back around him.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Divya murmured into her hair, one hand on the back of her head, rocking her gently back and forth.

Cam left them to their reunion, played assumptive host and went ahead to start making up the guest rooms.

He didn’t know that in a year’s time, Divya wouldn’t need a guest room when he stayed over anymore. That after two and a half, Giana and Malik would be helping him box up his solitary little life to move in with their dad, saying good-bye to the guest rooms they’d each picked out as their own after frequent visits with Divya. That Taffy would become just as much Giana’s dog as Cam’s, that Malik would have someone around who understood what it was like to be so anxious every moment, that Cam would be there for their shows and sports games and high school graduations, making carpool schedules with KC and comparing notes, sharing a life, that Cam could finally relinquish his hold on the guilt he’d held in his heart since college.

What he knew then was that it was nice to have other people in his home again. 

That maybe he’d given up on the idea of a family of his own too soon.

That maybe he’d still like to have one, someday.

And that maybe that someday could be soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you once again to my girlfriend Mothallah for enabling me to bring this fic to life, and phonecallfromgod for all your constant help with characterization and inspiration (and for being the reason I allowed myself to enjoy kidfic to begin with).


End file.
